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ZoneAlarm 9.1.507.000 Eats System Resources

It seems with each new upgrade of ZAISS, the problem of ZA consuming system resources gets worse. With 9.1.507.000, I am experiencing many problems - among them:

1) Despite more than adequate system resources, bootup is taking several minutes longer than before and I am unable to do anything on my computer until ZA finishes loading which takes at least another couple of minutes past boot up.

2) VSMON.exe is constantly hitting the hard drive, will not allow the hard drive to sleep, and is consuming my drive's free space. I get the free space back by running CCleaner but otherwise my hard drive would be full. Due to the excess wear and tear on my hard drive, I am concerned it will fail prematurely.

3) Some process of ZA is updating in the background and when it does, my PC locks up completely and will not allow me to do anything until the update finishes.

All of these are definitely related to ZA because I can disable it and my problems go away.

I am unable to get help for this problem because I cannot be at my computer when ZA's Tech support is available for chat. There is no other way to contact Tech support.

This forum can't help me because each time the users get together to discuss the problem, the forum moderators jump in, tell you to contact Tech support and then close the thread.

How in God's name am I supposed to get help for this problem? Will the moderators please allow discussion to continue in this thread until the issue is resolved?

Re: ZoneAlarm 9.1.507.000 Eats System Resources

Message to GeorgeV:

In another thread that is now closed you told me the following:

"As for Tech support, they do offer a Web-based Email Responce after hours, however, it may take 3 or 4 days to get a Reponce to the Web-Base Tech Support method, and if Tech Support needs more feedback, the Delay in providing a solution could take a Week or so.."

I am unable to locate a means for emailing Tech support after hours. Could you provide a link?

Re: ZoneAlarm 9.1.507.000 Eats System Resources

Originally Posted by dccc

Message to GeorgeV:

In another thread that is now closed you told me the following:

"As for Tech support, they do offer a Web-based Email Responce after hours, however, it may take 3 or 4 days to get a Reponce to the Web-Base Tech Support method, and if Tech Support needs more feedback, the Delay in providing a solution could take a Week or so.."

I am unable to locate a means for emailing Tech support after hours. Could you provide a link?

Thanks,

DC

Click on the Tech Support Live Chat link in my signature..If it is After Hours, sometimes a Default Web-Based Questionaire form will be available for you to request Help and provide a few details of your problem, when you click submit, it will generate a Case Number and send you an auto-generated Confermation notice to the Email address you provided and also forward the help request on to Tech support, that may take 3 or 4 days for somebody to formulate a responce.. and send it to you..

Re: ZoneAlarm 9.1.507.000 Eats System Resources

Not sure that this might be your problem, but:

I updated my ZASS to 9.1.507.000 without a problem. However, I noticed my system slowed down dramatically and my hard drive was going into continuous spin mode. Trying to figure it out I noticed that I (too) had VSMON.EXE running silly CPU loads. Monitoring it with ProcessExplorer it gave CPU loads of 25% and above. All slowed, CPU load by VSMON process thread got increasingly worse.

Annoyed I went back to the previous version of ZA (9.1.008.000), and the problem seemed to be solved.

...and flagged it as a rootkit infection. Only killing/ removing it left me feeling somewhat uncertain, so I removed ZA completely, cleaned ALL traces, and made a clean install. Now the VSMON process behaves normal (no to low CPU load), although I have now ZASS 9.1.570.000 installed.

Could be you have this rootkit infection too? ~Bleep~

Last edited by GeorgeV; May 8th, 2010 at 10:40 AM.
Reason: Offtopic comment

Re: ZoneAlarm 9.1.507.000 Eats System Resources

Those entries can be legit and are from ZA (+ KAV in ZA). ZA has drivers installed at kernel level that is why you get that "false positive" by GMER.
Your issue was a corrupted ZA database (where settings are stored) or damaged file(s). A clean install removed the issue and fixed your vsmon problem.

Re: ZoneAlarm 9.1.507.000 Eats System Resources

Originally Posted by fax

Same version? Same OS? Same antivirus bases?
If yes, you should have the same entries. Vsmon for sure

Yes, machines here are all overhauled regularly and at the same time (give me some time to walk back and fro ;-). But yes, same ZASS license, product, version, AV DB, and upgrade both from 9.1008 to 9.1.570. The VSMON heavy CPU load I described occurred with 1 machine only, and the GMER flag was only at that machine.